By Jacob Mafume
President Mugabe is a little big man who cannot lecture us on any subject let alone give advice on how the democratic contingent must remove him from power.
The fact of the matter is that Mugabe has over stayed his welcome; he failed dismally to transform his doomed party from a military liberation machine to a proper transformational civilian political party.
He continues to live in the past; constantly talking about his liberation credentials more than the people who were at the battle front some of whom he denied National recognition like Lookout Masuku who died under house arrest.
Mugabe just like many Nationalist failed to cut the umbilical cord connecting him and the former colonial masters, he implemented the same oppressive tactics that the oppressor used.
The PDP only views his best achievements as just changing the National Anthem twice and hoisting the National flag replacing the Union Jack and the rest is darkness. Since darkness is not a subject of success there is no success in Mugabe’s long painful tenure.
Under Mugabe’s watch the highest number of human rights violations were witnessed these include loss of lives during Gukurahundi and elections related state sponsored violent episodes especially the 2008 run off.
Children were butchered and mutilated while pregnant women were annihilated in cold blood all for the sake of power retention and shocking ethnic hate.
Under his watch the Zimbabwean Economy lost its bread basket status, we in the PDP have always argued that his choice of Finance Minister in Chinamasa is the worst in the history of this country.
Without appearing to criticize for the sake of it , when our President Tendai Biti was finance Minister the economy at one point was the fastest growing economy in the world, the subsequent recognition was his award of best Finance Minister on the African continent.
The point we make is the current crisis is just a balance sheet of Mugabe’s incompetence, there are some people who have shown the nation that it can be done even in the shortest of periods and we take pride in that.
Another point we make is that there are competent people in the opposition who have accomplished what Mugabe failed to do in decades by demonstrating transformational touches in statecraft therefore Mugabe does not qualify to lecture us.
At the present moment Mugabe is presiding over a country with an economy on its knees, a governance crisis which is synonymous to mafia kind of style ,a style which reveres corruption as its hallmark.
He presides over a divided country with so much hatred and hate speech just like Rwanda before the genocide, our local newspapers are reflective of this fact, his criticism of opposition unity is therefore not a surprise.
He presides over a country with a broken down social contract and moral fabrics in intensive care. It is a country where the citizen hates the site of a police officer. We therefore want to, mention that Mugabe is morally, ethically and cognitively ill, he cannot lecture anyone including his grandchildren.
Not to mention that age has taken its toll on him, he reads wrong speeches, sleeps at international platforms, falls from airport red carpets; he even confesses he falls a lot at home. Just yesterday he referred to Minister Mandiwanzira as President Mandiwanzira and then laughed as if he was in some Trevor Noah show. Surely the democratic contingent does not need advice from him we instead advise him to step down and let Zimbabwe open a new chapter into the origination of a Transformational Democratic Developmental State.
We therefore restate the resolution we made at Mandel in April of 2014,which was also adopted by our Inaugural Convention of 11 September 2015 which ran under the theme “Reclaiming Zimbabwe” and elaborated in Cannon C of the Agenda for Restoration and Rehabilitation of Electoral Sustainability(ARREST).
We argued all this time that political parties need to put Zimbabwe first by coming together to create a coalition of champions. It is this coalition against dictatorship which can give Zimbabweans a fighting chance against Mugabe’s regime which intends to capture all institutions involved in running elections.
Jacob Mafume, PDP Spokesperson
